Vocation-Based Hierarchy Among Pre-Islamic Arabs

Last updated: April 30th, 2025 at 12:11 pm · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute

A tribal-based social hierarchy is well known among late pre-Islamic Arabs. However, this was not the only way of classifying people.  Vocation played some role in determining the social status of a person.  All trades were not considered to be of equal status by society.  Some jobs were superior to others.  Most menial work one could be compelled to do, in their social belief, was manual labour. Manual labourers were called masiykhiya (those who bow).¹  Hassan bin Thabit curses his opponent in this manner, “Your father was a blacksmith, and even worse, you are the slave of a blacksmith.” ²  This is the reason trades were reserved for either Jews or non-Arabs like Persians or slaves. ³ 

Further Reading

History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/

Footnotes

1. Sayyid Murtada al Zubaydi, Taj al-‘Urus (Kuwait: Matba’at al- Ḥukuma, 1965), 6:58.
2. Ḥassān bin Thābit. The Dīwan of Hassān B. Thābit, ed. Hartwig Hirschfeld (Leyden: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, 1910), 127, 48.
3. Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (New York: Routledge, 2001), 117, 118.